Stonewing Guardian

by Zoe Chant

  And now he felt it, and it staggered him. He wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of his life with this woman. He could imagine endless conversations, every one more fascinating than the last. He wanted to wrap up in her angular, beautiful body; he wanted to learn more of her courage and her heart.

  Did she feel it? She must, he thought, even if she didn't know what she was feeling. The love had to be mutual or it didn't work.

  "Thea," he began, and then there was a sudden sharp sting in his shoulder, followed by a rapid, intense tingling sensation and weakness that spread through him.

  Thea

  "Mace, what—!"

  It took her a moment to realize what had happened. One instant he was holding her hands, calming her down, and gazing into her eyes with a besotted expression. Then he flinched violently, threw his arms around her, and dragged her behind a rock.

  While she tried to understand what had just happened, Mace yanked something out of his shoulder and dropped it. Thea heard it clatter to the ground.

  "They shot you!" she gasped, as everything clicked into place. "Like Gio." She could feel herself going pale. "Exactly like Gio. Mace—"

  "It's designed to work on gargoyles. It won't kill me; it didn’t the first time, after all.” His voice was heavy and faltered between words.

  Thea moved closer to him, holding him up. "Where did it come from?"

  "Above us somewhere."

  He glanced around the rock. Thea peeked too. She could feel him leaning more heavily on her.

  What if he passes out this time, like the last time? He's much too heavy to carry!

  "I just saw him," Mace murmured. "At the top of the stairs. It's Javic. He must have gotten free and taken his crossbow off the boat."

  Mace clearly could see much more in the dark than she could. It was all she could do to make out the broadest shapes of anything at a distance.

  "Mace," she whispered. Her tongue felt thick at the mere idea of what she was suggesting. But they were trapped up here otherwise. "I—I think you should do the stonewalking thing. Get us away from here."

  I can endure it for just a few minutes. I'll have Mace with me. He won't let anything happen to me.

  "I ..." Mace's voice was slow, dragging. "I don't think I can."

  Thea was jolted out of her internal pep talk. "What do you mean, you can't?"

  Mace laid a hand on the rock pillar, then shook his head. "The drug. It's blocking my ability to stonewalk."

  "Now what?" she whispered. The night seemed full of ominous shadows.

  "First I need to get you somewhere safe. Then ..." He took a deep breath; his breathing seemed labored to her. "If Javic is up here, and if there's even a chance the medallion is here, I'm not letting him get it."

  "You're barely in a condition to walk, let alone fight. And if you think you're doing this alone," she said, "you're very wrong."

  Mace huffed out a soft laugh and put an arm over her shoulders.

  "My stone sense is deadened by the drug," he said quietly. "But that empty place I felt is up ahead. I still remember where. Javic won't have that. So we can get ahead of him."

  "Let's go, then."

  "If fighting starts, I don't want you in danger, okay? Hit the ground and stay down."

  "I'll do what I feel needs to be done," she said firmly, but then softened. "But I'm not going to put myself in danger unnecessarily. Trust me, after seeing you guys fight, I don't want to be any closer than I have to be."

  They made their way quietly through a moonlit landscape of wind-sculpted stone. The low sound of surf and the wind between the rocks helped cover the noise they made. Which was a good thing, because Mace, normally graceful as a big cat, was leaning on her heavily, occasionally stumbling.

  He was worse off than he wanted her to know, she thought, and her heart clutched, remembering how he had passed out in her arms the first time he was drugged. If he did that here, she didn't know what she could do.

  Something touched her leg. She almost screamed, then reached out a hand and felt Gio's flexing stone flank.

  "Hey, friend," Mace murmured.

  Gio bumped Mace's hand with his stone nose and looked around alertly, the sculpted strands of his mane bristling.

  "Mace," Thea whispered as a thought occurred to her. "Gio can still stonewalk, can't he? Could he go for help?"

  "He could get you out of here," Mace said, brightening.

  "I can get myself out of here," Thea retorted. She was willing to stonewalk with Mace, if she absolutely had to, but the idea still paralyzed her with horror. And she trusted Gio ... but her trust for Mace was something beyond that, beyond rational thought or words. With Mace, she could do things that felt impossible to her. Gio was a friend, but he wasn't—

  A mate?

  Whatever that meant. But it felt significant, especially the way Mace had said it, freighted heavily with emotion.

  "We stick together for now," she whispered.

  Mace reached out, groping until he touched Gio's mane. Thea watched in worry. If even Mace's night vision was failing, they were in trouble.

  "Old friend, I need you to go scout for us," Mace whispered. "You'll be our eyes, and our guide. We need to avoid the magician and find whatever ruins might be up here."

  Thea still wasn't sure how much Gio understood of their conversation, but he shook his mane and bounded off into the dark, barely making a sound. It was as if the shadows swallowed him.

  The night seemed even more eerily full of shifting moonshadows and wind noises now, knowing Gio was out there, and probably Javic too, when she couldn't see either of them.

  Abruptly there was the clattering of rock against rock, not very far away. Thea stifled a gasp.

  "Gargoyle? I know you're out here," Javic's voice said from not very far away. "I know I got you with the dart. You can't get away now."

  Mace growled low in his throat. He stepped behind a rock pillar with Thea, pushing her against it. "I'm not as helpless as you think," he said. "You'd better not have hurt the Nilssons."

  "Not at all. They're sleeping. I just quietly walked away."

  Thea couldn't tell exactly where the voice was coming from. Somewhere behind them, between them and the exit. The only way out, apparently, was forward.

  "What do you want with me?" Mace asked.

  "What do you mean? You know what I want! It's here on this island, isn't it? And you know where."

  "It's just you over there, isn't it? Why haven't you opened one of those portals? No, I know why," Mace said abruptly. He sounded as if he'd come to a sudden realization. "You're not bringing the others here because you don't want them to know. You want the medallion, but you don't want them to have it."

  There was silence from Javic. Thea wished she could see his face.

  Then he said suddenly and sharply, "All right, sure. Why not? Maybe I want one damn thing for myself, after everything they've taken."

  "If you're being forced to cooperate with them, we can help you," Mace said.

  "Far too late for that," Javic said.

  Abruptly there was a tremendous clatter of rock, and a lion's roar that echoed across the top of the island, along with a yell from Javic. Gio! Thea thought. He'd joined the fight.

  "Go!" Mace said, pushing Thea forward.

  She ended up having to help him. They hurried from one rock pillar to another, and then Mace abruptly stopped.

  "What?" Thea whispered.

  "It's here." He looked around. "Here ... somewhere."

  He reached out, touching the rock.

  A mine shaft, the fishermen had told them. Thea had been half expecting something underfoot, but there, abruptly, a darker-than-black opening gaped in the rock in front of them. It was half blocked with tumbledown stones.

  It was her worst nightmare.

  She pulled back.

  Then a fireball slammed into the rock above them, and abruptly everything began to slide.

  "Damn it!" Mace grabbed for her. As an avalanche of
rock descended on them, he pulled her into the opening, and the rumbling and clattering surrounded them, sealing them into the dark.

  Thea

  Thea's first reaction was helpless, unreasoning panic. It was happening again. She was buried. She was going to die.

  "Thea. Listen to me. You're going to be all right."

  Mace's voice, rough and hoarse as it was, felt like a lifeline guiding her home. She became aware of his hands clasped on hers, the ground rough under her knees.

  "It's going to be okay," Mace said. She clung to that voice, supportive and strong. "Just listen to me and concentrate on your breathing. Don't open your eyes yet."

  Her eyes were shut? Well, that explained the darkness! She cracked her eyes open.

  The first thing she saw was Mace's face, worried, his intent green eyes peering into hers. He was lit from below, some sort of flashlight or lantern—

  Wait.

  "Thea," Mace said. His hands tightened on hers. "Look at me. Don't look around yet."

  But she couldn't help it. The light came from the flashlight lying beside Mace's leg, and it lit up craggy rock walls close around them, a low ceiling supported with stone slabs, a great tumbled pile of rock just ahead—

  She made a choked sound. She could feel panic starting to overwhelm her.

  "Thea, look at me."

  She did. She hardly had a choice. It was better than looking at anything else. Mace was still speaking, a low murmur of comforting words, filling up the dark and helping push back her fear.

  As she stared into his eyes, she became aware that Mace looked really, really bad. He was pale, his face beaded with sweat and his pupils completely dilated, so the green of his eyes was nothing but a thin ring around each one. He looked on the verge of collapsing. He kept having to gasp to catch his breath.

  "You're really sick, aren't you?" she said. "The drug—"

  There was a sudden loud THUMP from the other side of the rock pile. The tunnel shook. Dust sifted down from the ceiling. Thea screamed and felt herself sway. The panic was there, barely contained below the surface.

  "I'll be okay," Mace said, his voice low and steady. "We're going to get up, okay? We need to get away from the entrance. He's trying to get in."

  "Oh," she whispered.

  "Can you stand up?"

  "I think so." She wasn't at all sure, but she was tired of being the weak link in this particular situation. "What about you?"

  "I can. I'll be fine."

  But he was very wobbly as he staggered to his feet. The tunnel of the ceiling seemed very low to her, but it was actually just above his head. He could stand upright, if he hadn't been hunched over, barely managing to stay on his feet.

  Thea bent down and picked up the flashlight.

  For the first time she looked around—really looked. They were standing in a tunnel. The walls were rough-hewn rock reinforced with rock slabs, like the ceiling. And it was very close, very tight. She could have touched both walls if she had reached her hands out as far as they would go to both sides.

  She realized her breathing had picked up again, becoming panicky.

  "Thea. Listen to me. Look at me."

  There was another thump from the other side of the rock pile. Mace ignored it. He took her hand, closing his bigger, stronger fingers around hers.

  "It's very safe," Mace said. His voice creaked wearily. "My rock sense isn't as strong as usual right now, but I can tell how sturdy this is. It's been here for a thousand years, and nothing has cracked or slipped. It's not going to do it now. Trust me."

  "I trust you," she whispered.

  "Let's go. If we can get away from the entrance, get a little deeper and let the drug wear off, I can get us out of here."

  Deeper, she thought with wavering fear. Oh no.

  But there was no choice.

  "I'll be with you," Mace said. He gripped her hand. "Every step of the way. We don't have to go far, just far enough that he can't get to us. As soon as the drug clears my system, we'll escape."

  Thea was not at all sure that was going to be soon. He could barely move, and ended up putting an arm over her shoulders, Thea helping him along as they went slowly down a passageway that sloped down as if it was a throat leading into the earth's stomach.

  At least helping Mace gave her something to focus on other than her own terror.

  You're not going to die, she chanted to herself. There is plenty of air to breathe. You're not going to die.

  And you don't have a choice. Mace is depending on you.

  She also tried a technique that she had figured out on her own, which was counting things; anything that kept her mind occupied seemed to help keep the downward spiral at bay. At first she counted cracked stone slabs, but that made her pay too much attention to the walls around them, so she tried thinking back to the U of T campus and counting things there. Twelve bus stops ... thirteen bus stops ...

  After a while, it felt as if the panic part of her mind started to become exhausted. She didn't feel well in the slightest. She felt achy and shivery and bone-weary, as if she had just run a marathon or was getting over the flu. But she could also think more clearly again, which was good, because they came to a branch in the tunnel they were following.

  Oh God, it's a labyrinth.

  "Mace?" she said, shaking him gently. "Which way?"

  Mace raised his head. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead. In the flashlight's beam, he looked dead white. He wasn't getting better; if anything he seemed to be getting worse.

  But he raised a hand and pointed down the right-hand tunnel before letting his hand drop limply.

  Thea swallowed and looked back up the tunnel. She had heard some ominous cracking and crunching earlier, but now all was silent.

  Could Javic be following them? And where was Gio? Was he even still alive?

  I could just go back, and—

  And what? Sit in front of the collapsed tunnel entrance until Javic broke through? Get herself taken prisoner?

  She swallowed and nudged a loose rock with her foot, moving it to mark the tunnel. Hopefully if Javic was coming behind them, he wouldn't notice and would just think it was a rock that had rolled there naturally.

  They went on, down and forward. They passed through several more branches in the tunnel, with Mace weakly indicating which way to go. Thea followed his directions and didn't ask how he was making his choices. She didn't think she could bear to find out that it was entirely random. She marked each junction with a rock, or in one case, with no loose rocks handy, a small thread from her shirt, pushed against the wall where she hoped it wouldn't be noticed.

  At one point they came to a narrow crack in the rocks through which she could hear the hollow boom of the sea and smell its salt-metal smell. She realized they had come far enough down that they must be at sea level now.

  It was impossible to fit through the narrow opening; they couldn't even come close. But she pressed her face to it for a moment, breathing deeply of the fresher air.

  This is probably why the air is good to breathe down here, even though it's been centuries. Cracks like this let in plenty of fresh air.

  That made her feel a little better. It was science, she thought. Plenty of fresh air, no danger, science says so!

  As they went on, she began to notice, shining the light around, that the walls were getting farther apart and the ceiling higher. That was helping a lot with the oppressive, crushing feeling. It was almost like being in a big hallway, and she was okay with those.

  Then it opened up even more. The hallway became an auditorium. A small auditorium, granted. But it opened out into a large round chamber, with a high ceiling. The flashlight beam barely reached across, even at the edges of the light.

  Someone had put a lot of work into this place, considering that it was buried at the bottom of a bunch of tunnels on an island where no one ever went. The floor was made of flat paving stones, and in the center of the room, like some sort of ancient altar, there was a pedestal w
ith something on it.

  Thea laughed out loud. She couldn't help it.

  After all her insistence that real-life archaeology wasn't like Indiana Jones, she had stumbled into something that looked for all the world like it came straight out of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

  "Mace!" she said. Excitement overwhelmed her fear for the moment. "Look where we are! I think this might be it. I think we found it."

  Mace didn't answer; instead he swayed, his knees wobbling.

  "Mace?"

  Thea eased him carefully down to sit against the wall. He looked appalling. His breathing was short and stuttery, and his eyelids fluttered, showing flashes of glazed eyes that didn't seem to focus on her. Thea pressed her fingertips to his throat and felt a rapid, weak pulse.

  And they were at the bottom of the island, with no way to get help. Her elation crashed and burned.

  Then she turned the flashlight toward the pedestal.

  If this was really what Mace had been trying to find, maybe it could help him.

  "Stay here," she told him quietly, and leaned in to lightly brush her lips across his cool ones. He responded to that, ever so slightly, a brief press of his lips back to hers. The idea of something terrible happening to him made her heart crumble. "Please wait for me. I'll be right back. I think I've found—we've found something that can help."

  She approached the pedestal, shining the flashlight around in case the place kept up its adventure-movie vibe with some traps. There didn't seem to be any, though.

  The pedestal was a low plinth of the same rugged gray stone as the rest of the island. It didn't look carved; it looked like it rose naturally out of the floor, an extension of the gray paving slabs. Which would seem to be impossible, except that she had seen what Mace could do with stone.

  And there was something sitting on it, a stone disc that looked at first glance, to her archaeology-trained eyes, like some sort of stone wheel or weight.